• 37C max 23C min Wednesday
• 37C max 23C min Thursday
• 40C max 24C min Friday

Today, Saturday, it’s been up to 40 degrees Celsius again in our part of rural Mallorca. When you live in this kind of climate, you have to learn to deal with it as best you can. The Spanish siesta is one way of addressing the lethargy that strikes when the mercury soars, although I rarely indulge because there’s usually too much else to do. But today, I stretched out on the sofa, put up my feet, closed my eyes and drifted off . . . bliss.

Tap turns on the water

I’d have loved a cool shower after my siesta, but I’ll have to be satisfied with a hot one. We have no mains water here, so water is delivered by tanker every six weeks or so, into our cisterna (a large storage tank) and then pumped to the house through large black pipes. In the summer, nature heats up the water in the tank and the pipes and delivers it hot – to both hot and cold taps! It means we can switch off the gas water heaters and save money on butano, but there’s not a drop of cool or cold water to be had . . . always a challenge when it comes to washing the salad vegetables!

Cooler weather is forecast for tomorrow…and I’m sure we won’t be the only ones breathing a sigh of relief.

Jan Edwards©2012